Calamity Kim

Summertime Sowing and Stitching Spirits

I have spent this Spring making papermache dolls using bottles as a base. It gives them a more solid foundation than foil or paper and helps inform the final shape.

This was my first experiment and I love the way she turned out. I love using paper mache and then paper clay to sculpt the features. Painting gesso and acrylics and a final finish takes lots of time but it is a process filled with ample opportunity to change the theme or style and develop a doll filled with character.

The white witch was made on a dish detergent bottle covered in layers of paper mache.  I cut a hole in the front and made a niche before beginning to paper mache. The black witch pictured above is shorter and made from a large honey bottle. She also has a niche, for her paper mache wish bone. I also made a few mushrooms and will continue to explore this fun medium as the summer grows hot and the air conditioner purrs.

This October I will be selling Halloween, Day of the Dead and Witch Dolls at a show called Spirits in Sanford that is located in Sanford, Fl on Oct 9 & 10. Please follow this link for more info on times, location and other fine Halloween Artist Vendors selling there.

What is your favorite Halloween decoration? Do you collect vintage decor or Dept 56? Do you keep your Halloween decorations up through Thanksgiving? I would gladly trade in Valentine's Day for a second Halloween. Let's see if we can start a movement to make that happen!

xox,

Happy Summer!

Calamity Kim

 

spooky

cackle, cackle!

love,

calamity kim

following my bliss

Each morning for over a month now I have been getting up at 7am, getting dressed and driving to the park to walk. My friend Elizabeth started walking with me and we have gone from 1 mile per day to 4 miles most days now. I feel better and have more energy and am losing inches from my waist! My goal is to get back in my favorite size 14 levi's. Say a prayer for me- please!

The downside is that I completely changed my habit of getting up and sitting in front of the computer screen for hours while I drink coffee and blog or Flickr or Facebook or shop etsy. :(  sad, I know. I miss you. You miss me. It's just until the fat melts from my barrel or the pollen blooming in the springs stops me. I'll try to get on here more often.

anyway....

So, that is my explanation and I hope you understand. I wish I could do it all but the older I get the more that I only seem to get a few things done each day and it's a toss up to whether it will be housework, grocery shopping, spinning, sewing, writing or chasing unicorns in fairyland. I'd rather just sit around in the park on a quilt having picnics with fairys, sprites and gnomes, but I just can't spend my days lollygaggin!

I have been working on a few things for publication and trying to get my display put together for Atomic Holiday Bazaar which is the second weekend in December. It is going to be a long show this year- Saturday, Sat night and Sunday!!! I am so excited and will have a woodland/mermaid/gnome theme going on. I plan to sell paperdolls- large and small and felt cupcakes, felt deer, felt gnomes, felted sweater gnomes and mushrooms and bags, bags, bags!!! Also a few aprons, smocks and handspun yarns.

I recently had the pleasure of taking a spinning workshop with Lexi Boeger who wrote Intertwined and has a blog called Pluckyfluff. It was fibertastic and I learned a lot. We made crazy batts and spun them and had a great time spinning with her at Picasso Moon Yarns where she will be teaching again next year!

Halloween is my favorite month and I will be digging out some decorations this weekend and posting some tutorials on witch dolls and making delightfully decrepit rotten roses to wear (complete with spider pin) to spellbind mortals with one ghastly, ghoulish,  glamorous gaze!

 

Happy Haunting!

Calamity Kim

Paper Mache Pumpkins

There might still be time to make some paper mache pumpkins if you go to Stolloween and learn how. He somehow makes it look easy And scary too!

Happy Halloween!

Beware the Full Moon....

calamity kim

Waking up to another day

"Dream on it. Let your mind take you to places you would like to go, and then think about it and plan it and celebrate the possibilities. And don't listen to anyone who doesn't know how to dream." ~ Liza Minnelli

As this morning dawns with new and infinite possibilities, I sit here and wonder what I can accomplish in the next 12 or 14 hours. I have so many things that could be finished, or revisited. I have so much wonderful fabric waiting to become something new.

This time of year when the air begins to cool and rumors of The Great Pumpkin are whispers on the wind, I start pulling out my Halloween collection.

There are witches and skulls. Cats and bats. Spiders on fake cupcakes and spooky music in the background (thank you Amanda). I love Fall and was blessed by a friend (thank you Sara) who took some time and wrapped red and changing leaves and acorns and other signs of the season up and mailed them to me! Poor mountain girl like me down here in the flat lands with narry a sweet maple tree in sight! So sad...no Fall for Kimmie.

I can't believe it's October 22. Where has the year gone? Flown off like a witch on a new broom! I was supposed to list some cupcakes in Etsy- maybe tomorrow or even later today I can get that done.

It seems there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done. No matter how early I rise or late I stay up! I guess we all have that problem, don't we? Too much we have to do and then add in what we want to do! But some days you get lucky and there is nothing to do except what you want and it's   w  i  d  e  open!!! The freedom of possibility.

Morning light reflecting off punches waiting to be busy.

Knowing that I want to play with some fabric is a step in the right direction and I walk into my sewing room, greeted at the door by Dracula (painted by the Crafty Hag) and looking at my new extension table for Bernice Bernina, I can hardly wait to make something!

I ordered it from the Bernina dealer in Tampa and they were kind enough to mail it- I have been too busy to drive up. I also purchased a quilting foot. Next I need a walking foot and I will be good to go!

This Gothic Prairie by Jane Sassaman is calling my name and I think I see a bag in its future...speaking of gypsies and fortune telling (what a segue) have you seen any trailers for The Wolfman with Sir Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Benicio Del Toro? It's not out until Feb 2010.

I hope it will be good. I have such a fondness for the original. Waiting is so difficult but if my days stay as busy as they have been, it will be here before I know it!

OK, little calamity readers, I am going to go find something to do...don't be afraid...the moon won't be full until Nov 2nd!

Love & Stitches,

Calamity Kim

Some Days Are Over Before They Have Even Begun

This is one of my all time favorite prints. I first saw it as a colored poster at a shop called Elysian Fields. I searched for it for a long time whenever I was in a museum gift shop or looking through art books of old paintings hoping to find it there.

Now, it can be found online and I even have a small rubber stamp of it.

I wanted to share this site called Vintage Printables with you just in case you need an excellent resource for free vintage images.

 

There are old bats- just right click on the picture and chose save as to download.

 

There are images in color categories like this one- RED!

There are many images of butterflies and mushrooms and all sorts of botanicals.

There are maps, even one in the shape of a heart.

I found it and knew it was too great not to share. I am not real crazy about the pop up viewers on the site but it is worth the nuisance to have the lovely vintage images.

I went to see Bright Star yesterday with a friend and loved it so much. It was sad but the costumes were lovely and the opening scenes are of a needle making stitches in cloth. It is playing at an old theater here- Burns Court, which is small and narrow with a small screen- indie art movies and foreign films are what you get when you go there. It seems fitting to see a period piece there and the last movie I saw there was about Beatrix Potter. Another movie that made me cry. Pack your tissues but don't miss Bright Star if it's available where you are. Love, it's all about the love. Sweet, innocent, romantic love.

All right- I am off to Picasso Moon for another great day learning to spin ply- two yarns together! Yippee!

Have a great weekend!

Don't go batty!

 

Or maybe since Halloween is on its way, you should go batty! I know I am!

Gotta run!

xo, calamity kim

War Between Left Brain & Right Brain!!! Or is it Trick or Treat Night???

Happy Halloween all you ghouls and guys!
All week I have been going to the Art Store and watching demos and I am relieved not to be going today and tomorrow. Yesterday, I stopped sewing at 3:30 and it was difficult to tear myself away!

I had been working on the doll quilt for Laura. No sneeky peeks, not yet, anyway!
I am in a 4 way swap with Laura, Lucinda and Sarah.
They are wonderful quilters and I am honored and so happy to be able to receive their work and share the process of creating with them.

Sarah loves liberated quilting and I have been greatly inspired by her (and Gwen Marston) and am now most definitely hooked on houses!

Yesterday I had a fleeting thought,  (as I was sewing)...I could make these forever!
Then I listened to the conversation in my head between left brain and right brain and it sounded something like:

LB: Making houses is certainly a smart and addictive way to accomplish a quilt top. I could just make house blocks forever, I enjoy them so much!
RB: wellllll....why would I have to just limit myself to only houses? could I make house purses? or maybe aprons? yeah!!! Patchwork these houses on an apron!!!! yippeee!!!!!!
LB: But imagine how soothing it would be to maintain a pattern and you could number each house and line them up perfectly on the wall. Just constructing foundation pieced houses would be a very efficient use of all the architectural fabric you have been stashing!
RB: I think my will is stronger than yours and I am dominate here! I think we will not make ONLY houses! I think we will have freedom from oppression and we will make whatever I want whenever I want!!!!
LB: If you say so. I'll go back to sleep...I'm very tired.. even this small amount of use has me completely exhausted!
RB: Ha!!! I rule!!!! That left brain must be insane to think I would ever agree to just make houses...still...they can all be different...think of all the varied fabrics we could use....maybe I'll just make a few more....

I had to just almost forcibly tear myself away!
Then when I got home I made a few more!!!
Wow! Who knew it would be that way?
I didn't!
 I have seen them and thought, yeah, that's cool- but never until I started making some did I get it! It's that way with a lot of things, isn't it? You must walk a mile in someone else's moccasins.

Anyway, last night as we watched Earl and then Supernatural I started putting together the treat bags for tonight's trick or treaters and realized I needed more variety- I had only bought dumdums and some creepy plastic bugs and skeletons and rings to go in the treat bags- we need some Reese cups or something chocolatey..so back to the store!
Sometimes the Mr and I disparage over these Holiday Traditions that we are forced to endure and play the "what if we run out of candy game" where we substitute things like slices of bologna, American cheese, a handful of carrots, a  frozen burrito, boiled eggs, pencils, paper clips, and the best- orphaned socks from the dryer in the bags thrust at us as we open our door for the 20th time!
 Why not?
How about that can of tahini paste that's been in your cupboard for 2 years, unused, forlorn, now a treat!!!!
Imagine the surprise and delight on the faces of the children when they get a hunk of broccoli or a box of baking soda or package of oodles of noodles.
 Who said it had to be candy?
Wouldn't this be a great time to clean out the crap and give those ragamuffins something special for Halloween???
Oh, alright, just kidding.

Don't go freaking out on me!
It's just amusing to us.
Sort of like this wonderful kit that Amanda showed me that's up for bids on eBay-
anyway... I find that very amusing!
What a hoot!!!
It's up to 50 bucks already!
Now that's a trick!
I do want to share some sweet and spooktacular paper dolls I got from Debra Schooch last Sat- man this week has flown by! I haven't posted at all really this week! Sorry gang! I don't know where the time goes!
Debra- yours will be mailed as soon as the glitter gets dry!!!
Aren't they adorable?
The owl is a pin too!
I will be wearing it when I pass out the lunch meat and sugar packages tonight!
Trick or treats!!!
Beware the Moon!!!
Cackle, cackle!
Happy Haunting!
Calamity Kim

Fanciful Twist's Halloween Blog Party!!! It's this Saturday! Get your Pointy hats on and be ready to Party!!!

I should have mentioned this earlier but I just found out that it's happening on Saturday!
Vanessa is having a Halloween Blog Party and here's the invite!

All you have to do is go visit her blog and sign up on this post and then on Saturday post your story/pictures/Halloween decor either on your blog or at Flickr and she will link to it on Saturday and have it on her sidebar until Halloween is over.
I had so much fun with her Mad Tea Party that I just can't wait to see what happens with this party!
Here's the button for it if you want to add it to your sidebar

Thank you Vanessa, again, for making Blogland such a wonderful and magical place to play.
Now, I'm off to get ready...